In saying goodbye to 2005 I'd like to make a post with some sense of finality. All I can say for sure is that I still have lots to learn. For instance, that post on December 24th (my first with the "Word for Blogger" applet) which begins with the large bold font...I can't edit that. Therefore, I'm going to have to make more mistakes to figure it out. There are some things I have learned this week. First of all there are some things I'd like to post that I feel rather shy about. Michael Crichton for example has many things I'd like to link to, but that seems to be forbidden, though I have asked permission and received no response. Interestingly enough, the forbidden link was something I stumbled across at The Corner, where I also read this. Since no one reads this site I'm sure Mr. Crichton would forgive me for trying to spread his knowledge. I hereby acknowledge that is what I am trying to do. Boy, would I love to have a conversation with that man! I highly recommend State of Fear, an excerpt of which can be read here. I've put lots of links here, lets see if they post properly.

I'm getting revved up now. I want people to come here and visit the corner or Ann Coulter or, and especially, Victor Davis Hanson. He has become my favorite, though I like many that post at National Review Online. This is just the beginning.

Thank God, Christmas has passed. The stress level was minimal this year. I got to talk with my parents, and my sister, but I didn't have to go anywhere. I'm watching Scrooged and still trying to figure out this link thing. I thought I had it down, but I'm still having trouble with it. It seems simple enough, but I'm still having trouble with it. Simple HTML, yet I can't get it right. When I do, this site will expand. I want to explore many things political, religious and otherwise socially significant. That will happen in due course.

I finally got it! I can post the code, which is something I can not post here, because the edit mode on this site gets confused. Let me try this-- Oh, I'll have to give that up for tonight. Let me try it this way: Start with a left pointing caret followed by an "a." Space and type href= and follow that with quotation marks with the url and close the quotation. Use another caret (right facing) and include the text you want the link to refer to. Follow that with a left facing caret and follow that with a forward slash and another "a." Close the link with a right facing caret. Wow, that's hard to describe. If I were to post that as described it would screw up things in the HTML world of this blog.

Merry Christmas! I'm still struggling with this, but here goes. As a test I must make a link to something and see if I've gotten it right. It seems that I am writing in HTML mode, which should alow me to enter code for the url and have it be disguised behind the text of the entry. So, let me try suggesting that someone reading this check out a link. Let's start with NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive and see how that works. This is another test.

Well, I am totally confused. I did the previous entry from Word, which was kinda cool, but the large letters that lead it off..."This is my first att," I can't figure out how to get rid of. I've also decided to play with the ADSENSE thing, though that will mean nothing since no one ever visits this site, but I'm trying to learn here. Perhaps if I could publish some relevant contemporary thoughts about politics, movies or any other cultural topic, I might get something going...but I don't see it. In the meantime, I will continue to play with this until I figure it out.

Here is my first att

Here is my first attempt at using Word with the Blogspot applet. Let me see how this works. I wonder if it is necessary to make separate posts, or if I can continue to add to this page. This is a test.

OK. I'm back in the game, sort of. Merry Christmas, everyone! I just downloaded the "Blogger for Word" application. I'm curious to see how that works. I think I can figure this font problem out in due course. Perhaps the Word application will help. The "link" thing that I had finally grokked, I seem to have forgotten. It's a simple HTML line that I had at one time written down. It should be easy enough to memorize, though there seem to have been improvements to this site that may help. I've been away too long.